Walleyes on the menu when season starts Saturday

They aren’t the hardest fighters, either, but they give a good enough account of themselves.

Where they really shine, though, is on the table. I’d knock down my mother and my grandma, too, to beat them to a plate of walleye fillets. A lot of people feel the same

John Pitarresi

Walleyes aren’t the prettiest fish, although they’re handsome enough.

They aren’t the hardest fighters, either, but they give a good enough account of themselves.

Where they really shine, though, is on the table. I’d knock down my mother and my grandma, too, to beat them to a plate of walleye fillets. A lot of people feel the same.

Which is why thousands of anglers will be out Saturday, the opening day of “pike” season, trying to get a limit, or enough over a few days for a very nice dinner or two.

Lake Delta, Canadarago Lake, the Barge Canal and Mohawk River, and the Black River are among the traditional hot spots in our area, but Oneida Lake remains the king of walleye waters in Central New York.

Capt. Tony Buffa, who has run charters on Oneida for many years, has a couple of tips for hopeful walleye anglers, both of which relate to wind:

1. If you locate a school of walleyes and the weather is stable with very little wind, those fish aren’t going to move very far from day today.

2. And, if things have been slow and the wind picks up, the walleyes will start to hit; a chop on the water often means good walleye fishing, but it also means baitfish will move and the big fish will follow. If you want to keep catching them, you have to move, too. Remember, if it is really choppy on Oneida, well, discretion is the better part of valor.

According to the staff at the Cornell University Biological Field Station at Shackelton Point, there are just under 500,000 adult walleyes in the lake. That’s well below the numbers of the peaks of 30 to 60 years ago, but way above those of the 1994-2003 period. The biologists, however, are concerned about recent poor survival. Let’s hope there is a solution to that, because those walleyes are worth their weight in gold.

Oneida Lake’s fishery in general seems to be in good shape. Yellow perch numbers are up, although not to 1980 levels. The smallmouth bass population is three times what it was in the 1980s and has made Oneida a really terrific bass lake. White perch, an under-rated sport and food species, are very abundant.

There are many other varieties of fish out there, including lake sturgeon, which are showinig up in huge sizes. A 93-pound fish was netted by the Cornell staff last year, along 10 others of 50 pounds or more, including one of 90 pounds and another of 85. Those fish are capable of towing you around for a while.

There are indications, too, that sturgeon stocked between 1995 and 2004 are now capable of spawning. That’s a good thing.

If you catch a sturgeon, it must be released immediately, but the biologists wouldn’t mind if you take a picture and send them a copy. And, if you see sturgeon in the tributaries this spring or catch small individuals – two feet or less – they’d like you to call them at 633-9243. They’d also like to know about any round gobies you might encounter. An invasive and annoying species – although one that has resulted in larger-than-normal smallmouth bass in the Great Lakes system – gobies are small, round-headed, dirty-brown baitfish that look something like darters and are maybe 4 to 9 inches long.

If you have an interest in Oneida Lake fishing, or just the lake in general, you might want to attend the Oneida Lake Association’s annual meeting Monday at Cicero-North Syracuse High School. There is some information on that in the notebook.